Update from Sabana Grande de Boya

Greetings!

We were going to leave this base yesterday or today but, because of the work of folks back home, we are going to be staying here until Friday and we now have LOTS of work to do. Kina and I are doing our best to manage the various job sites to ensure the work goes as smoothly as possible, Dominican-style of course. Some kids have learned how to stucco (put finishing concrete walls to smooth them out so they can be painted) and are busy doing that at Pierre´s house. (Pierre runs the Ministry centre here and if you looked up the word servant in the dictionary, you should see his name. He has five children: 18, 16, 14, 12 and 2, and they all live at the Centre. The family lives in two bedrooms - all the kids in one room that´s smaller than most bedrooms back home. They share all of the rest of their living space with work teams at the Centre. They have little to no privacy. Pierre owns a house within walking distance of the Centre. It is unfinished so we are working to finish it for him so he and his family can move to this small, modest, three bedroom home). Other students are busy helping make concrete and pour beams at his house. Others are digging trenches for footings for the storage room at the Ministry centre. A crew of four went to one of the poorest areas I´ve ever seen in the Dominican: a batey called Altagracia, to paint a two room school. On top of all of that we are fixing desks here (whenever we have power, which in this city is sporadic at best...it comes on and off randomly) and painting various things around the Ministry Centre, Juan Calvino (John Calvin) school and church on site. Tomorrow many will be laying block, continuing to stucco and...we´ll see what else. We had breakfast at 7 this morning and most will be working past 6. I´ve been craving a day like this :)

Thanks for your prayers and happy, encouraging messages.

We had four people out sick today so please pray for health for the students.
Oh, and Max continues to recover at home. He did need to go to the hospital last weekend because of extreme pain. He was not admitted. They said it was an infection. It isn´t worrisome perse, but it is another sign that this is not to be taken lightly and he is not yet out of the woods. Having said that, we are continually grateful that Kina is here with us.

¡Hasta luego!
raquel